Margaret Mitchell & John Marsh

by Marianne Walker

  Her bridesmaids and flower girls wore lavender tulle and silver satin and carried bouquets of orchids and pink roses. Peggy wore a long, traditional, white satin bridal gown, seeded with tiny pearls, and a long veil that cascaded from a pearl-seeded headband, a style popular during the flapper period. John said that he had never seen her look more beautiful.60

  However, in the midst of this elegant, traditional southern wedding, she surprised her guests when she—always a show-stopper—appeared at the top of the stairs carrying one dozen long-stemmed, scarlet roses, not the traditional white bouquet. When her father saw those red roses, he glared and whispered loudly, “What the hell are those doing here?” She shushed him, smiled, took his arm, and started walking down the steps.61 As an outward symbol of her separation from the Catholic Church, she had the ceremony performed by Reverend Douglas, pastor of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. The groom, the red roses, and the Protestant minister were more than her grandmother and her Fitzgerald relatives could stand. They had nothing to do with her after this wedding.

  Two preteenage first cousins on her mother’s side were her flower girls, and her bridesmaids were Dorothy Bates Kelly and Martha Bratton Stevens. Augusta Dearborn was the maid of honor. Courtenay Ross, who had married Lt. Bernice M. McFayden a year earlier, could not attend because she was with her husband, stationed in the Philippines, but her mother served the punch at the reception. The groomsmen were Stephens and Winston Withers, one of her old boyfriends. The best man, standing straight and tall and handsome next to the bridegroom at the foot of the stairs, was John Marsh. Later, Peggy told Francesca that the moment she saw John and Red standing side by side that night, she knew she had made a dreadful mistake.62 In 1924, she told Courtenay Ross the same thing, that she knew almost immediately that she had married the wrong man.63

  Peggy and Red spent the first night of their married life in an Atlanta hotel. They did not leave town until the next night when, according to John, “The wedding gang, three of us who were in the procession [Augusta, Winston, and John], carried them down and put them on the train.”64 While they spent their honeymoon in Wrightsville Beach and at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, John, lonely and depressed, went back to work in Tuscaloosa. What he did not know until later was that on her wedding night and during the honeymoon, Peggy was lonely and depressed too.

  In writing to his mother on September 6 about the wedding, which he called “a grand and glorious affair,” he tried to conceal his sadness, but it is present in his first paragraph:

  I didn’t realize how very long it had been since I wrote to you until I began checking up on myself today as part of the process of beating back to normalcy. I don’t suppose you mind—I hope you will understand what I mean and for that reason will forgive me for saying—I haven’t had much time to think of my family for some time. That isn’t a nice thing to say and I don’t mean it literally—only—that the jolly old brain has been whirling a bit rapidly for some time and such things as concentrating on letter writing would have been difficult.

  All the sympathy he had received at the wedding made him acutely aware that his behavior was unusual for a jilted lover. Thus, he went on to say, “Don’t think the two were imposing on me. It was a pleasure for me to have even that sort of a part in the wedding and an abundance of energetic hard work prevents thinking. . . . The fact that I, Red’s chief rival, was his best man caused a good deal of comment, and I found myself before I left Atlanta completely surrounded by a halo of romance because I had done the thing.” Then, he confessed something that worried his mother terribly:

  It’s an odd sort of situation. Peggy and I are very close to each other, closer than any other man has been to her with the exception of Red. I love her more than I did Kitty, which is saying a lot, and she cares for me very deeply. If one or two things could have been arranged, the positions at the altar might have been reversed. However, it’s all over now and I am beating back to normalcy. . . .

  His mother feared that it was not over, and Frances knew for certain that it was not, and that her brother would not get back to normalcy for a long time.

  By this time, Frances had graduated from college and had moved to New York in the summer of 1922 to seek her career in writing. John scribbled her a note indicating that he was not able to keep his staunch attitude after his “halo of romance” vanished. His tone in this undated note is unlike that in any of his other letters:

  Brava! Viva! New York, ho! and to hell with the commonplace! Adventur-r-r-re, R-r-romance! I always wanted to do that sort of thing but never had the courage to make the plunge. It will make me proud if a sister of mine has the courage to do something I thought over too long.

  I am glad you are getting rejection slips. I never even got that far. We are going to make a success of you yet. You are at least two years ahead of me when I graduated.

  Write to Peggy, but don’t bear down too heavy on the congrats. Tell her you hate her for not marrying me, but wish her good luck anyhow. Ask her for some inside dope on how a girl tosses a lover into the ash can, and that lover still remains her devoted slave. That’s what I am, hers and yours.

  But his loneliness and sadness are even more evident in the following poignant passage he wrote to his mother:

  I said I hadn’t had time to write to you. Dearest Mother, there were many times when I wanted you terribly. No one else could have taken your place. But I am the sort that doesn’t like to put out much in the way of admitting things I feel, and since you weren’t here and no one else could take your place I went through it with my head up and barrels of cheerio for the entertainment of the mob. We’re all children even when we grow up, I suppose, and we don’t want nobody else but our mothers some times.65

  CHAPTER

  5

  1922-1925

  LOVE REGAINED

  I have fallen, and I am glad of it. I have been in love with Peggy for a long time, as I said, but it wasn’t nothing like this here.

  —John Marsh to his mother,

  20 January 1925

  1

  AFTER THEIR BRIEF HONEYMOON, Red and Peggy returned to Atlanta to live in the Mitchells’ home, a big mistake considering how Mr. Mitchell and Stephens felt about the marriage. But they had no place else to go. Red had no job and, much to Peggy’s dismay, no money. Their arguments began on their honeymoon, when she discovered that he did not have enough money to pay for the cottage they had rented. Although he was estranged from his family, he took her to Raleigh so that she could meet his parents and he could borrow some money from his father before they returned to Atlanta.1 Peggy was unhappy and depressed from the moment she said “I do.”

  Living with his father-in-law put a terrible strain on Red; and his unpredictable, slightly ominous personality butted head on with Peggy’s bull-headedness. He expected to be waited on, and he often came home drunk late at night. They began to have violent arguments that sometimes included her father.2 This situation bred such a strained atmosphere that Mr. Mitchell took to his bed.3 By the end of September, Peggy wrote John in Tuscaloosa, telling him about her troubles. The first chance he had to take two vacation days, he headed back to Atlanta, where he found her despondent. Married less than a month, she told him she wanted to divorce Red. Emotionally committed to her as much as he had ever been, he promised that as soon as his role in the fundraising campaign for the University of Alabama was over, he would move back to Atlanta to find work.4

  In a letter to Frances, he explained that the marriage was

  tragic from the start as it was fated to be a failure. The two of them love each other very much, but they are as dissimilar as it is possible for two people to be, with virtually nothing in common in temperament, viewpoint on life, likes or dislikes. It is my observation that it takes more than love to make a successful marriage. Everyone recognized the big chance they were taking when they married, and things have worked out as we feared they would. Their total lack of congeniality caused constant small clashes that threw
Red off his stride . . . and were threatening Peggy with a nervous breakdown.5

  Keeping his bootlegging activities a secret, Red would leave the house, be gone for two or three days, and then return, refusing to give any explanation. But shortly before Thanksgiving, he disappeared. Fearing his return to harm her or, perhaps, just fearing harm in general, Peggy started sleeping with a pistol near her bed.6 Because her family and friends had advised her not to marry, she felt embarrassed and depressed. Although she had always appeared to be indifferent to public opinion, she was now keenly sensitive to what others thought of her and would remain so for the rest of her life. During this period, her relationship with some of her mother’s family became even worse than it had been before. She believed that every relative disapproved of her, and she was nearly right. Some despised her for creating one scandal after another and for besmirching the family name with talk of divorce immediately after her elegant wedding. She grew listless, declined to supervise the servants, and stayed in her room all day sleeping or reading. Knowing the critical situation in the Mitchells’ house, her friends left her alone. No longer a debutante, she went to no parties. Miserable at home, she longed to get away, to be independent, but wondered what kind of job she could get. The southern culture of that period frowned on women who worked outside the home. No women in her family earned their own way, for nice girls did not work—they married. Teaching was perhaps the only completely acceptable career for gentlewomen, but only if they remained unmarried.

  Her predicament was torturous. She was married, but without a husband to support her, she still lived in her father’s house. She had rejected her Catholic religion, yet she was still influenced by its teachings against divorce and remarriage. She had no job skills, and she had thrown away her opportunity to get an education. She had been brought up in wealth, but now she had little money. She was totally dependent upon her father, whose law practice, like many other businesses during the boll weevil depression, had fallen on hard times.7 The expense of her wedding placed a burden on her father that he did not need or deserve at that time, particularly considering the circumstances of her marriage. She hated being dependent on him, so she turned to John for advice and for financial help.8

  2

  Although the kind of social prejudice that her father subscribed to placed journalism and acting in the same low-life category, John encouraged her to apply for a writing position at the Journal for two major reasons: she wanted to be a writer, and he had friends in journalism. Because the Constitution was a morning paper and the staff had to labor throughout the night to get the paper out, he did not want her to work there. Even though the Georgian was an afternoon paper, he did not want her working there, either, because of the stressful working conditions. The only other afternoon paper was the Journal and it, like the Constitution, was locally owned and staffed mainly by Atlantans. It was also the most profitable paper, strongly supported by Atlanta and its environs.9

  In his earlier letters, John had invited Frances to come to Atlanta so that he could help her get a job at a newspaper. “The job I would like to get for you in Atlanta,” he wrote her around the end of March 1922, “would be as a writer on the Sunday magazine of the Atlanta Journal, feature story work which now employs several very gifted young writers. Failing in that I hope to land you in work of somewhat similar nature.” But after Peggy’s separation from Red and the difficult circumstances in which it placed her, he never mentioned such an offer again and even discouraged his sister from seeking newspaper work in general, particularly in Atlanta. He encouraged her to go on with her writing, but not newspaper writing.10 At first, Frances was a little miffed. Francesca Renick Marsh believed that his main reason for discouraging Frances from coming to Atlanta was that his sympathy lay with Peggy; he believed that Peggy needed his help more than his sister did. As a college graduate with an excellent academic record and a few short published pieces as well, Frances had marketable writing skills. Peggy had less to offer an employer and was in a difficult situation at the time.

  Because there were no vacancies in the magazine staff then, John made arrangements for Peggy to have her first job interview, sometime during that late fall, with Harlee Branch, the city editor at the Journal.11 Even though John knew Peggy’s prospects of getting a job as a reporter were virtually nonexistent, he believed that the experience of having an interview would be good for her. Branch was impressed by her earnestness and the way she went about asking him for a job. “I wanted to give her a job,” he said. But, as he explained, the Journal did not feel the time was right to hire women except on the magazine and society sections, which were both well staffed then.12 Always more optimistic than she, John saw something positive even in the rejection; at least now the city editor knew her and perhaps would call her when he got ready to hire a female reporter or when a position opened up in the magazine or society sections.

  In the early 1900s, Sunday magazines, intended to entertain, were introduced by newspapers competing with the powerful Hearst papers; which were intended, as owner William Randolph Hearst said, “to engage brains.” Filled with photographs, interviews, feature articles (often on fashions, socialites, and women’s issues), these magazines were enormously popular and their growth opened up opportunities for women who wanted to be writers.13

  The editor of the Journal’s popular Sunday Magazine, a 32-page illustrated publication, was the sandy-haired, tight-fisted Scotchman, Angus Perkerson. Although John did not know him well, he had a good friend who did—O. B. Keeler, at that time the golf editor at the Journal. In mid-December 1922, when Keeler learned that a young woman was quitting the magazine staff before Christmas to get married, he promptly told John that he would speak to the editor on Peggy’s behalf.14 Perkerson agreed to hire Peggy, but only on a temporary basis because he was skeptical about any debutante’s ability to get to work on time, much less hold down the job. “We handle a great deal of copy and I don’t go in for extensive alteration—haven’t time to,” he told her. “What we are looking for is straightforward writing without self-conscious tricks, and it’s surprising how few people can do it. You either can or you can’t. I’ll try you out, and we’ll see if you are one of the people who can.”15 Years later, Perkerson recalled: “I remember very distinctly how Peggy came down to see me one day. . . . She looked very tiny. She was wearing a suit and a beret. We talked for a while in the sort of file room which adjoined that room where we all worked—all five of us. . . . Anyhow, she got the job—and kept it.”16

  In recounting her version, Peggy wrote,

  I made my debut and then went onto the Magazine Section of the Journal somewhat to the consternation of my father. I had no newspaper experience and had never had my hands on a typewriter but by telling poor Angus Perkerson outrageous lies about how I had worked on the Springfield Republican (How could I? And all my people good Democrats?) and swearing I was a speed demon on a Remington, I got the job.17

  Thus, with no training and no education, Peggy was hired as a feature writer to fill the place left by Mrs. Roy Flannagan. Her first work day started at 8:00 A.M., and her first day on the job was probably December 22, 1922, because her first story with the byline “Peggy Upshaw” appeared in the December 31, 1922, issue. However, her name does not appear on the payroll roster until the week of January 22, 1923. Her salary was twenty-five dollars a week, the going pay for female writers in those days.18

  Peggy surprised Perkerson. She was conscientious about getting to work early and enthusiastic about accepting her assignments. Later, he admitted:

  I was a little worried about putting her on the staff, because she was a society girl, and I said . . . “Medora, I reckon we’ll always be waiting for her to get to work.” But I was wrong there—she was always waiting for us when we got there in the morning, because she came to town on the street car and had to leave home before the cook got there. So she ate her breakfast in the little cafe in the building—the Journal folks called it “The Roachery”—a
nd then she sort of opened up the office.19

  And, as John had suspected, in no time at all nearly all of the young men in the building were infatuated with her. Medora Field Perkerson, the editor’s wife and a staff writer, took an instant liking to her and the two enjoyed a close friendship that lasted the rest of their lives. Peggy got around to warming the heart of Harlee Branch, the shouting city-news editor who was said to spit nails at reporters, particularly the cubs. Even Walter Sparks, the straitlaced Journal photographer, noted for sternly lecturing the female staff on their demeanor and dress, fell under her magnetism. They became great friends, and he went with her on many of her assignments. When he died years later, Peggy wept openly at his funeral service.20

  Another old curmudgeon who appreciated her youthful gaiety and interest in him was the composing room foreman, who was so cranky that even Perkerson avoided him. The staff marveled at her ability to get the foreman to hold the forms open for late copy. Little did they know that she had sensed the old man’s loneliness when she first met him and had secured a place in his heart by going to him with her first problem. Terrified when she was handed her first job of reading proof, she went sweet-talking to the foreman in his grimy quarters, which reeked with the odor of hot lead and rang with the cacophony of linotypes. Starved for a little attention and appreciation, he was delighted to help her and promised no one else would know that she could not read proof. He would do it for her, he said, until she got “the hang of it.” When he died not too long after that incident, Peggy asked Medora to attend his funeral service with her at Clarkdale, about thirty miles outside of Atlanta.21 After seeing her there, the workers in the composing room would do anything for her.22